Continuing our journey in safety—improving the way we learn from ...

SYMPOSIUM SERIES No. 150 # 2004 IChemE

THE BURGOYNE MEMORIAL LECTURE

CONTINUING OUR JOURNEY IN SAFETY—IMPROVING THEWAY WE LEARN FROM LESSONS IN SAFETY

Aidan Hayes1 and Frederic Gil2

1BP Group Safety Director2BP Group HSSE Knowledge Management Advisor

‘Companies are composed of human beings and that means we will make mistakes.

Things will go wrong. The challenge is not to deny that reality but to learn from

every mistake and to do everything in our power to ensure that mistakes are never

repeated’ – Lord John Browne of Madingley — CEO, BP Plc

INTRODUCTION — OUR JOURNEY IN SAFETYFor the last fifteen years, BP has been successful in continuously improving the safety ofthe workforce. It is a simple fact that our performance in safety, as measured by thereduction in serious injury frequency, has improved by a factor of 10 over 10 years.This continuous improvement has been successfully delivered despite the multiplemergers and acquisitions which have more than tripled the size of the Company overthe past 6 years and had increased our employees and core contractor workforce to wellover 250,000 people. As well as delivering an overall improvement in our accidentfrequency rate the number of fatalities involving our workforce has also decreased signifi-cantly over the past 10 years.

Figure 1. BP Safety DAFWCf Performance 1987 – year to date 2004

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The safety performance graph shown in Figure 1 above illustrates the continuousreduction in injury frequency since 1987.

Apart from the compelling moral and human obligation to continuously improve thesafety of our workforce, incident prevention also contributes to operations excellence andprevents business loss as the following BP statistics will attest:

. The average cost of a serious incident in a BP process plant (chemicals, refinery,platform . . .) varies from $2m to $10m. In 2001 BP had 3 incidents above $50Mand one close to $300m. The average cost of a refinery outage is $2.334m

. The cost of a LTI case in BP is estimated to be on average $150k (based on a study of97 BP workforce lost time injury cases from 2003 which include medical costs, cost ofreplacement resource, loss of production and investigation, costs of corrective actionsetc.)

. The cost of a non fatal single serious Heavy Goods Vehicle accident is estimatedbetween $500k to $1.5m.

THE INGREDIENTS OF SUCCESSIt is enlightening to look back over the past 15 years to identify the incidents, interventionsand individual acts of leadership that occurred to create the regular step changes in BP’ssafety performance. Although BP has been operating successfully for 100 years and for themost part has been successful in managing safety, the year 1987 was chosen the start and asignificant milestone in our official safety journey. It was in 1987 when 3 significant fireand explosion incidents occurred at our Grangemouth petrochemical plant in Scotlandresulting in the death of 3 of our contractor employees. These separate incidents werefully investigated by the Health and Safety Executive and as a result of their findingsBP was prosecuted and found guilty of not providing safe systems of work to ensure asafe workplace. As a result of the HSE prosecutions BP was fined a total of £750,000,a record fine for a British company at the time. These incidents not only resulted in thetragic death of three of our valued workforce, resulted in significant losses in productionand damage to plant but also badly effected our corporate reputation and shattered ourcomplacency.

Due to the human and financial consequences of these three incidents BP seniormanagement moved into immediate action and by making expectations clear on howsafety across BP should be managed in the future and the accountability of managementto ensure the safety of our people, BP employees or contractors. Since then we have setstrategic direction for safety at corporate level, carefully tracked our performance insafety across our global operations and have been committed to continuous improvementin our safety performance year on year.

From 1987 onwards there was a progressive shift of the accountability for safetyfrom the safety professionals and advisors to the operational line management and overthe ensuing 3 years the required competencies in managing safety were identified anddeveloped. Over the period 1987–1990 all managers and supervisors were trained inthe International Safety Rating System (ISRS) to ensure that management at all levels

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were trained in the ISRS safety management system and made aware of their accountabil-ities for the safety of their people.

In 1990 the formal recognition of line accountability for safety was introduced inmanagement performance contracts by the MD for HSE, Russell Seal who in 1990 deliv-ered a clear message to BP management by his memorable statement of expectations ‘Ifyou can’t manage safety, you cannot manage’ making safety an essential competency forBP managers. Since 1990 safety, owned by the line and fully accountable for performancehas been the primary force that created the environment to deliver the remarkable perform-ance improvement illustrated by the graph shown in Figure 1.

This continuous improvement in our safety performance since the early nineties hasbeen achieved by not only being clear about line accountability for safety but also bygetting the basics right such as making our safety expectations clear to our entire work-force, setting simple and understandable metrics and goals that are clear and understand-able by everyone, creating our current HSE Management system ‘Getting HSE Right’ andby providing an increasing focus on our large contractor base that makes up over 50% ofour workforce population worldwide. More recent success has been achieved by improv-ing the reach, quality and competencies of safety leadership to better understand personaland safety risks to powerfully influence safe attitudes and behaviors among our workforce.

These and many other powerful interventions that have been put in place over thepast 25 years have contributed to a much safe workforce today than ever before and arereflected in our latest injury frequency statistics in 2004. (Equivalent lost time injuryrate of 0.40 and a total recordable injury rate of 2.6.)

OUR COMMITMENT TO CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTAs our statistics suggest we have come a long way in safety and we are rightly proud of ourachievements but as always in protecting our people from harm there is still more to do tokeep those who work for us, with us and those that come into contact with our operationssafe from harm. In safety we are always restless to improve while accidents still occur. Aswe look ahead to improve our future safety performance we plan to build on past successesby reinforcing current best practices as well as looking for internally and externally fornew techniques and opportunities.

One of the distinctive achievements that has helped deliver our past successes hasbeen our ability to learn from incidents and near misses to prevent similar incidents fromoccurring. Since the BP Amoco merger in 1999 we have improved our understanding ofthe causes of safety incidents and the application of the learning across our operation.However we are far from perfect in this discipline. Despite the improving applicationof learning from previous accidents there is still too much evidence of lessons notbeing learned and applied across our operation and many of what may be called ‘repeatincidents’ still occur. These constantly remind us that we have more to do to better under-stand the true learning from incidents, to better share the learning more widely and effec-tively and to institutionalize the learning from accidents in our own operations as well asfrom others in our industry. One could argue that in the petrochemical industry there are no

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new hazards that surprise us when incidents occur, just our inability to learn the lessonsfrom previous incidents and near misses.

IMPROVING THE WAY WE LEARN AND EMBED LESSONSTo improve the way we learn from incidents and assure we improve the institutionalizationof the learning in our day to day operations we have developed the ‘virtuous learningcycle’ model to identify the key elements of learning, our current strengths and opportu-nities to improve in the learning from incidents and near misses and the sharing of thelessons learned.

Traditionally in BP we have spent a considerable amount of time and resources onthose learning and sharing activities on the right hand side of the virtuous learning cyclemodel and are confident that we now better at understanding the true causes of accidentsinside our company. We have become somewhat effective in sharing the lessons withothers however it is a fact that we have spent insufficient time and effort in the actingupon those lessons shared and institutionalising them in our day to day operations. Inorder to ensure improvement in each of the virtuous learning activities we have instituteda programme of improvement as follows.

IMPROVING INCIDENT INVESTIGATIONFollowing the merger with Amoco in 1999 BP introduced a Group wide incident investi-gation system which contains a strict and comprehensive methodology to identify the

Figure 2. The BP Virtuous Learning Cycle

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immediate and root causes and system failures behind all safety incidents. All incidents nomatter how minor are investigated using the BP root cause technique and the application ofour ‘Comprehensive List of Causes’ method. The Comprehensive List of Causes (CLC) isa root cause analysis technique that is a tool to assist investigators in determining the sys-tematic causes of incidents. The CLC is designed for use in the analysis phase of aninvestigation.

The technique is applied in all parts of our operations worldwide using a commonlanguage and structure and in the more serious events such incidents involving fatalitiesthese are investigated by a Business Unit Leader led team which includes an experiencedroot cause or system failure specialist. Since 1999 we have trained well over 2000 peopleacross our global operations in the technique and have sustained competencies in the use ofthe technique by local ‘train the trainer’ programmes. We are very confident that the use ofthe root cause analysis technique has taken us a long way to where we are today byproviding a common investigation and incident reporting protocol.

We have also identified the need to become better at understanding human error andhuman behavior. Many of our investigation reports have listed these as causes, but manytimes our analysis of such causes has stopped short of a full understanding of why humanfailure happened. In light of this, we have commissioned some work with a UK basedindustrial psychology consultancy to develop better insights into these two areas. Theirunderstanding of human error and human behavior is of great interest to us and their appli-cation to incident investigation has led to the creation of a pilot training program in 2004which we will rollout to our leaders and root cause analysts in 2005.

CAPTURING THE LEARNINGWhile the incident investigation process has been very effective in determining whathappened, where and when it happened and to some degree an understanding of whythe incident occurred and what should be done to prevent a reoccurrence this knowledgewas typically contained in a detailed investigation report, which was not an ideal mediumfor sharing lessons learned to other sites.

To make the sharing of lessons more meaningful and compelling we have createdone page lessons learned documents that provide a quick overview as the details of theincident, including photographs and sketches, what the affected site is doing to ensurethe potential for reoccurrence of the incident is minimized and proposed what actionsshould be carried out on other sites to avoid such an event from materializing.

APPLYING THE LEARNING

The BP Golden Rules of SafetyThe BP Group policy has been to carry out root cause analysis for every fatal accidentinvolving members of our workforce. We have also carried out root cause investigationson the majority of fatal incidents involving non-workforce or third parties. These investi-gations into these fatal incidents have identified common and repeat failures in our safety

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Figure 3. The BP Comprehensive List of Causes. A tool for investigators to help identify immediate

causes of incidents and root or system failures

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Figure 4. Sharing the learning across our operations – the one page lessons learned report


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management system ‘Getting HSE Right’ The analysis helps us identify and understandwhich Elements of our safety management system have been found wanting and inneed of improvement.

Our investigations of these accidents have also shown that in many cases simpleprocedures for controlling routine hazards during such activities were either not in placeor were not being followed. To help better understand and manage safety hazards duringthese regular routine activities we gathered together good management practices into a setof simple guidelines. These have been titled the ‘BP Golden Rules of Safety’ which werepiloted and tested for 3 years in our Exploration and Production segment in response toworkforce fatalities and near misses across their worldwide operations. As a result of posi-tive feedback and improving performance we have implemented them on a Group wideand global basis.

The BP Golden Rules of Safety focus specifically on 8 areas of safety concern in BP:

1. Permit to Work2. Energy Isolation3. Ground Disturbance4. Confined Space Entry5. Working at Heights6. Lifting Operations7. Driving Safety8. Management of Change

The Golden rules identify current good safety practices and risk management andbring focus to areas where we believe we can make the greatest difference. Since wehave applied these simple guiding principles of safety and ensure a rigorous follow upwe have seen a dramatic reduction in fatalities across our operations. It is the accountabil-ity of leadership at all levels to ensure that their operations adequately address the GoldenRules of Safety and that the risk management actions become embedded throughout ouroperations. Also our analysis suggests that our major focus in the immediate termshould be on the management of our contractors particularly in the areas of drivingsafety and the other Golden Rules.

The BP Golden Rules of Safety are currently being reviewed to ensure theycurrently address current occupational safety risks and are being further developed tocreate Group wide minimum mandatory Standards on such activities as Driving Safetyand Control of Work.

The ‘Sharing the Experience’ SeriesTo help institutionalize lessons learned into operator training and to help raise awarenesson essential safety learning BP has created a series of safety booklets and informationpackages under the title ‘Safety, Sharing the Experience’ that are used to develop aware-ness and competency. The Safety booklet series now contains 14 titles with more than30,000 copies distributed over the past two years that have been translated into 5 majorlanguages. These lessons learned booklets have been very well received across our

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Figure 6. The latest BP Group Personal Safety Standards, Driving Safety and Control of Work.

Both Standards contain the lessons learned from previous incidents and contain mandatory

safety procedures for managing risks

Figure 5. The BP Golden Rules of Safety


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operations worldwide and are very much in demand from external stakeholders. Thesebooklets provide real value for operators, supervisors and engineers. Roy Sanders, theauthor of a book “Chemical Process Safety: Learning form Case Histories” has includedthe BP booklets in the section “The Best Seven Books on Chemical Process Safety from aProcess Engineer’s Viewpoint”.

The Sharing the Experience booklet series now contains 14 titles and has been verywell received worldwide. More than 30,000 copies have been distributed over the past twoyears and some titles had to be reprinted five times due to high demand. The 14 titles are asfollows:

. Hazards of water

. Hazards of air and oxygen

. Safe furnace firing

. Safe ups and down for units

. Hazards of electricity & static electricity

. Hazards of steam

. Hazards of Nitrogen

. Hazards of trapped pressure/vacuum

. Tank farm & (un)loading safe operations

. Liquid Hydrocarbon Tank Fires: Prevention and response

Figure 7. The BP ‘Sharing the Experience’ safety booklets that contain specific learning from

past incidents and near misses.

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Figure 8. The Dangers of Nitrogen awareness pack


. Hotel Fire Safety

. Passive Fire Protection

. Fire Protective Clothing

. Halon alternatives

One particular information pack on Nitrogen hazards was prepared after the Groupsuffered 5 fatalities and 21 serious incidents over a 4 year period. Since the pack wasdistributed and the awareness elevated around the risk of nitrogen, the number ofserious incidents involving this deadly gas has reduced remarkably. This awarenesspack has been shared with other members of the petrochemical industry.

A similar information pack is currently being prepared to address Integrity Manage-ment risks across all BP operations.

FOCUSING OUR COMMUNICATIONSharing lessons learned and institutionalizing the learning from past incidents will help theorganization to deliver our safety expectations. As a huge organization that has more thantripled size in the last 6 years to 110,000 employees from many heritage companies as wellas over 150,000 contractors working daily in more than 100 countries, communicating thesafety message and lessons learned effectively has been an increasing challenge. BP istherefore now focusing its efforts to improve the quality, relevance and timeliness ofthe routine incident information as well as improving the storage and accessibility oflearning across the organization.

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Figure 9. Sharing lessons across the Oil and Petrochemical Industry


WORKING WITH OUR INDUSTRYWe realize that there is a huge potential in sharing more efficiently and more routinely withour industry partners to help prevent incidents from occurring across our industry.

Our commitment is to continue to work within our own operations and with ourindustry partners to improve the way we learn and share common lessons to preventneedless fatalities and injuries.

CONCLUSIONAs previously mentioned our incident investigations illustrate that we continue to repeataccidents, which indicates that the process of sharing lessons learned, and learning fromlessons shared needs to be improved until we have irrefutable evidence that we nolonger suffer repeats of life threatening incidents. Without effective learning fromlessons from previous safety incidents we are doomed to repeat these incidents timeand time again typically resulting in the loss of lives, limbs and livelihoods.

APPENDIX: LESSONS LEARNING QUOTES FOR MEDITATION . . .1. “It might seem to an outsider that industrial accidents occur because we do not know

how to prevent them. In fact, they occur because we do not use the knowledge that isavailable.” Prof. Trevor Kletz

2. “A wise man learns from his own experience, but a wiser man learns from theexperience of others.” Author Unknown

3. “There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.”Josh Billings (1818–1885)

4. “Experience cannot be transformed. Though we might give wise advice, we cannotgive the wisdom to follow it.” American Ladies Magazine May 1828

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5. “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from badjudgment.” Barry LePatner

6. “Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake whenyou make it again.” Franklin P. Jones

7. “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde(1854–1900), Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892, Act III

8. “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from theexperience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to doso.” Douglas Adams (1952–2001), “Last Chance to See”

9. “Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.” David T. Wolf(1943–)

10. “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.”Vernon Sanders Law

11. “Experience teaches slowly and at the cost of mistakes.” James A. Froude(1818–1894)

12. “Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.” Olivier13. “Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t.”

Pete Seeger14. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George

Santayana (1863–1952), The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 190515. “When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years

at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and stormsand fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident. . .or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all myyears at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever inany predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.” E. J. Smith,1907, (another (probable) famous quote from the same author in 1912, Captain,RMS Titanic: “is it a big leak?”)

16. “Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse!”Derwood Fincher

17. “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” Dan Stanford18. “Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.”

Author Unknown19. “Each experience through which we pass operates ultimately for our good. This is a

correct attitude to adopt and we must be able to see it in that light.” RaymondHolliwell

20. “We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, andfor the purpose of profiting by dear-brought experience.” George Washington(1732–1799)

21. “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable mustman be of learning from experience.” George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

22. “The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make acrumb of experience go a long way.” Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)

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23. “Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are:precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatalmistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” Al Franken, “Oh, the Things IKnow”, 2002

24. “Experience: that most brutal of teachers.” C.S. Lewis, Chicken Soup for the Soul(book)

25. “Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.” Benjamin Franklin(1706–1790)

26. “We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.”George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

27. “The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that theformer anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon; but eventhe man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chancepresents him; it is the lapidary who gives value to the diamond which the peasanthas dug up without knowing its value.” Abbe Guillaume Raynal

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